ALICE: "If the Bush Administration wants to keep control of the
U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo, Cuba, why is it arguing before the Supreme Court
that Cuba has sovereignty?"
HUMPTY-DUMPTY: "What easy riddles you ask. Because if Cuba
has sovereignty, U.S. law does not apply there and so the 600 men and boys
called `enemy combatants' by the Bush Administration have no legal rights
whatsoever under U.S. law."
That is actually the argument presented by the lawyer for
the Bush Administration before the Supreme Court on April 20. In reality, Cuba
has not been sovereign in this particular territory since the Spanish Empire
took over the island, already called Cuba, in the late 15th century.
Four centuries later, in 1898, the U.S. Congress declared war against
Spain. While the United states calls this the Spanish-
American War, Cuba calls it the U.S. Intervention in their Second War of
Independence. Claiming that it was going to war to liberate Cuba from Spain,
Washington actually went to war to seize Spanish colonies--Guam and the
Philippines in the Pacific and Puerto Rico and Cuba in the Atlantic.
Snatching victory from the arms of the Cuban rebels who had almost
defeated the Spanish colonialists, U.S. troops occupied the island, including
the port at Guantanamo Bay, for four years. In exchange for removal of those
troops, the Cuban government, installed by Washington, agreed to incorporate
into Cuba's new Constitution the Platt Amendment, which had already become law
in the United States (compare the Helms-Burton law a century later, in 1996).
The Platt Amendment yielded virtual control of Cuba to Washington, allowing the
island to be converted from a colony of Spain into a neo-colony of the United
States.
Among the plunder legalized by the Platt Amendment was permission
to lease the 45-square-mile area on both sides of Guantanamo Bay. This became
the Guantanamo Naval Base, located near the eastern tip of Cuba--a strategic
position in the Caribbean and a deep-water port that would be of priceless value
to Cuba if Cubans controlled it.
Signed by the 1903 Cuban government that owed its creation to
Washington, the lease for Guantanamo stipulated that it would not expire until
both countries agree to its termination. The current Cuban government demanded
on March 5, 1959, that Washington end its occupation in Guantanamo province.
But Washington has continued to "rent" the land, originally paying
$2000 a year in gold and now sending $4,085 in the form of a yearly check that
Havana has not cashed since 1959.
The lease specified that the area was "for use as coaling or
naval stations only, and for no other purpose." But Washington has always
used Guantanamo for whatever purpose it chooses. When the Bush Administration
went to war in Afghanistan, the Defense Department turned the naval base into a
concentration camp for more than 600 captives from Afghanistan and at least 43
other countries. Classified as "enemy combatants," they have no right
to challenge their detention in any court anywhere. No charges have been filed
against them. They have no access to lawyers. They have no court dates for
hearings or trials. In short, they have no right of habeas corpus.
The challenge to this indefinite limbo is now in the hands of the
Supreme Court, which heard arguments from Attorney John Gibbons on behalf of
the petitioners held at Guantanamo and from the U.S. Solicitor General,
Theodore Olson, on behalf of President George Bush, et al. The Bush
Administration maintains that Cuba has "ultimate sovereignty" at the
Guantanamo Naval Base and, therefore, U.S. courts have no jurisdiction over
what happens there. But as Attorney Gibbons stated in his argument before the
Court, this "would create a lawless enclave insulating the executive
branch from any judicial scrutiny now or in the future."
Since U.S. armed forces took over the island from Spain, they have
never left the naval base at Guantanamo. It's as if a foreign power were to
seize an area on both sides of the Hudson River in New York and New Jersey or
both sides of the San Francisco Bay.
Cuba has repeatedly protested against the illegal occupation of
its territory by a foreign power. On April 15, Cuba proposed a resolution to
the United Nations Human Rights Commission that would have condemned the
violation of human rights at the concentration camp on Cuban territory.
Although Cuba temporarily has withdrawn the resolution, which faced a motion of
no action, Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque emphasizes that the resolution
has only been postponed and will be raised in whatever forum Cuba considers
appropriate.
Whatever the U.S. Supreme Court decides, if Cuba were indeed
sovereign at Guantanamo Naval Base, the concentration camp would not exist. In
the past, Cuba has offered to turn the whole area into a regional health center
for the entire Caribbean.
***
Historian Jane Franklin is the author of Cuba
and the U.S. Empire: A Chronological History.
E-mail Jane Franklin: janefranklin@hotmail.com